ISIS

by Jessica Stern

  JUSTIFYING THE KILLING OF CIVILIANS AND MUSLIMS

  Salafis must also grapple with the question of how to engage in the practice of war. Nonviolent Salafis have, for example, typically accepted that the intentional targeting of civilians is prohibited (though they acknowledge that some civilian casualties are likely to occur as part of any war).59 The current practice of some jihadi Salafi groups, though, includes the purposeful targeting of civilian populations. In defending these practices, jihadi groups have articulated a number of arguments. First, civilians can be killed if doing so is part of a proportional response.60 If the Americans are known to be purposefully killing Muslim civilians, the argument goes, then jihadi Salafis are justified in killing American civilians. In making this argument, some have suggested that U.S. war technology is so accurate that every civilian death must be intentional, thus justifying the targeting of any American civilian.61 Second, civilians can be killed if they betray Islam by assisting the enemy. In making this argument, jihadi Salafi groups have greatly broadened the definition of betrayal to include anyone (journalists, researchers, government workers, etc.) who might be seen as supporting the enemies of Islam.62 Working in this tradition, bin Laden claimed that all American citizens may be targeted because they live in a democratic nation and are directly responsible for the actions of their government. Similarly, a Muslim civilian can be killed for assisting the enemy since such assistance serves as evidence that the individual is not really Muslim.

  Similarly, nonviolent Salafis have typically held that it is impermissible to target Muslims but a number of jihadi Salafi groups embrace this practice and target marketplaces, hotels, and other venues that they know will be filled with Muslim civilians. In defending this practice, the jihadi Salafis argue that the Muslim casualty is an agent, and not a victim, of the movement itself. In other words, the death can be justified by framing the victim as an (unwitting) martyr and not as a mere casualty or victim of the war. A slightly more complicated argument has been made concerning the targeting of the Shi’a population. Though many reject this tactic on the grounds that the Shi’a are Muslims and should not be killed, there is a long tradition of anti-Shi’a violence among jihadi Salafis. Ibn Taymiyyah identified the Shi’a as a clear enemy of Islam and Abd al Wahhab adopted a number of anti-Shi’a positions that resulted in a spate of violence against Shi’a populations during his 19th century conquest of the Arabian Peninsula.63 This attitude persists today, and has resulted in significant anti-Shi’a violence in the 20th century. Thus the jihadi Salafi argument for targeting the Shi’a population—to include Zarqawi’s declaration of a “full-scale war on Shiites”—has a long and complex history.64

  BEHEADINGS AND SUICIDE MISSIONS

  Even among jihadi Salafis, there is little consensus on the use of tactics such as beheadings and suicide missions. Beheading—a practice embraced by terror groups like ISIS and an accepted method of execution in Saudi Arabia—was actually a preferable mode of execution in the pre-modern era because it was considered to be swift and merciful (and in an era with many trained swordsmen there was no shortage of individuals capable of beheading a man with a single blow).65 The adoption of this practice by jihadi Salafi groups has little to do with the desire to be humane. Instead, beheading is embraced because it is a powerful means of expressing authority and an effective way for groups like ISIS to intimidate potential enemies. Unfortunately, the lack of a recognized central authority in Salafism makes it difficult to challenge this practice. Beheading might be condemned by religious scholars across the Muslim world, but jihadi Salafis simply ignore these condemnations and turn to their own religious leaders in search of a justification for this tactic.66

  A similar dynamic makes it difficult to challenge the use of suicide bombings. While religious leaders in Saudi Arabia have explicitly identified suicide bombing as an un-Islamic practice, some movements within the jihadi Salafi faction continue to embrace this tactic.67 Justifications for suicide bombings vary, but Assaf Moghadam has suggested that we might trace acceptance of this practice to Azzam’s argument that martyrs would be rewarded in the afterlife and Zawahiri’s fervent embrace of the tactic.68 Importantly, jihadi Salafis concede that suicide is an impermissible practice but they argue that the act should be judged based on the intent of the perpetrator. That is, they focus on the actor’s intention to engage in jihad and reject the idea that the intent was to commit suicide. This effectively recasts the act as one of “legitimate martyrdom” and not as one of suicide.69

  ISIS’S DEFIANCE: RADICAL AMONG RADICALS

  ISIS IN CONFLICT WITH OTHER JIHADI SALAFI MOVEMENTS

  ISIS and its predecessors have long been in conflict with mainstream jihadi Salafism and there are major differences of opinion over what we might call the ISIS-approach to jihad. Thus when Zarqawi’s al Qaeda in Iraq coordinated suicide bombings at three hotels in Amman (resulting in the deaths of more than sixty mostly Muslim civilians) bin Laden was reportedly “furious.”70 In fact, Zarqawi’s excesses concerned al Qaeda so much that it sent him a series of lengthy letters encouraging him to reconsider his strategy. Not quite rebukes, the letters made it clear that Zarqawi’s actions were permissible but problematic. A 2005 letter from Zawahiri, for example, explained that al Qaeda’s goal of establishing a caliphate couldn’t be accomplished without popular support, and that it was important for Zarqawi to avoid actions that wouldn’t be understood by the masses. Given this, Zawahiri encouraged Zarqawi to reconsider both his antagonistic engagement with the Shi’a population of Iraq and his habit of publicizing “scenes of slaughter.”71

  This barbaric and excessive approach to jihad—embraced today by groups like ISIS—remains controversial. Sustained criticism of these excesses has come from a number of sources, including the widely influential scholar Abu Muhammad al Maqdisi. Al Maqdisi became prominent in large part because of his role as the spiritual advisor to Zarqawi (the two met in Pakistan and were imprisoned together in Jordan). His influence, however, far transcends the bounds of this relationship; recent analysis of jihadi Salafi literature has shown that al Maqdisi is the “most influential living Jihadi Theorist” and there is little question that he has played a critical role in articulating the ideological foundation of jihadi Salafism.72

  Like many jihadi Salafis, al Maqdisi has argued that the leaders of the Muslim world are nonbelievers (because they have adopted and applied comprehensive systems of law that are not Islamic) and that this justifies a jihad against them. Al Maqdisi has, however, been considerably more conservative in articulating how this jihad should be practiced. He has cited Ibn Taymiyyah in his argument for a limited use of takfir, and he has advocated for a restrained approach to conflict that limits the potential targets of jihad.73 He suggests that appropriate targets include only the rulers themselves and the government officials who support the regimes.74 In making his argument, al-Maqdisi broke publicly with Zarqawi and wrote a tract in which he criticized the latter for his indiscriminate use of takfir, overbroad targeting, and excessive violence.75 Al-Maqdisi has also argued against the frequency with which suicide bombers have been deployed suggesting that this practice should be used rarely.76

  Importantly, al-Maqdisi is no moderate; he has praised the 9/11 hijackers for their actions and he supports jihad against both Americans and the corrupt rulers of Muslim nations.77 He seems to be concerned, though, that the current generation of jihadi Salafis are engaging in jihad unwisely and that some of their more immoderate choices are undermining their strategic objectives.78 He is also concerned that these fighters are pursuing jihad without the religious knowledge necessary to do so properly. He is worried, in other words, about the integrity of the movement and he has expressed concern that some practices corrupt jihad itself.79 His work, according to Joas Wagemakers, might actually be understood as “an effort to take greater scholarly control of a trend that he feels responsible for but has also witnessed becoming more and more the prerogative of fighters instead of scholars.�
�80 In other words, al-Maqdisi may be attempting to undo some of the decentralization of authority that accompanied the rise of jihadi Salafism.

  ISIS’S CLAIM TO THE CALIPHATE

  ISIS’s approach to the caliphate is similarly controversial. ISIS has established a de facto state that currently occupies land in Iraq, Syria, and Libya. It is an organization that controls a third of Syria and a quarter of Iraq, covers an area larger than Great Britain, and has a population larger than Denmark, Finland, or Ireland.81 Whatever it may have been in the beginning, this now-independent organization “holds territory, provides limited services, dispenses a form of justice (loosely defined), most definitely has an army, and flies its own flag.”82 It also announced, in the summer of 2014, that it was the caliphate.

  In making this claim the group effectively demanded allegiance from Muslims far beyond the borders that it currently controls. The group claimed that “the legality of all emirates, groups, states, and organizations becomes null by the expansion of the caliph’s authority and arrival of its troops to their areas.”83 In short, the group has suggested that existing nations should quietly defer to its authority. This move, perhaps not surprisingly, was not universally embraced by the Muslim nations in the region. The group is, nonetheless, committed to defending its position and it has made an effort to reshape the public profile of its leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, in order to strengthen his claim to be the caliph. Sunni tradition—dating to the first years of the Muslim community—dictates that the caliph be a descendant of the Quraysh tribe, and since 2010 al Baghdadi has been increasingly vocal in claiming that he is one such descendant.84

  ISIS’s claim to have restored the caliphate is important for a variety of reasons: It gestures symbolically to a glorious past, it calls for allegiance and cooperation across the Muslim world, and it explicitly rejects Western models of governance and secularism. That said, it would be wrong to interpret this move as purely symbolic; it is unquestionably an attempt to return to an idealized form of government understood to have existed in an era when the Muslim world flourished.

  CONCLUSION

  Serious debates and deep conflicts have led to significant fractures among different jihadi Salafi groups. Despite the fact that individual movements within this faction often have much in common, the groups clearly disagree on a number of critical issues. In some cases, these divisions are rooted in the disagreements between the thinkers that inspired them. In other cases, today’s movements have been influenced by the same thinkers and disagree principally on how to interpret their positions or how these interpretations should be translated into coherent strategies. What is critically important, though, is that the positions that we see taken by groups like al Qaeda and ISIS are not aberrations born of nothing; they are products of long-standing discussions about the authentic practice of Islam, the call to jihad, and the practice of war. Disagreements of this nature will, as a result, likely continue for years to come and will not disappear with the death of a single leader or the dissolution of a single group. Whether or not this means that the jihadi Salafism will continue to grow and flourish, however, is another question entirely.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  J. M. BERGER

  It was a long road to this book and many people helped along the way. I can’t list them all here, but I can make a dent.

  First of all, I want to thank Jessica Stern for inviting me to work on this project with her. I am extraordinarily grateful for both the vote of confidence and the opportunity to collaborate with someone whose work I have admired for years. I would not have had this opportunity to work on this important subject at such length without her, and she brought many ideas and resources to the book that would otherwise have been absent. For all this and more, I thank her.

  Over the course of many years slogging it out alone, I have been fortunate to encounter others as well who have also placed their confidence in me and allowed me pleasure and privilege of their insights.

  Those relationships, and all I have learned from them, are reflected in these pages, often very directly. Among those most represented are Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Heather Perez, colleagues and friends whom I trust completely for their judgment, knowledge, and skills. I’m lucky to know both of them, and I couldn’t have done this without them.

  Providing additional crucial input on the manuscript itself were valued friends and esteemed colleagues Will McCants and Charles Lister, both of the Brookings Institution, and Brian Fishman of the New America Foundation. Their invaluable feedback on the book is surpassed only by everything I’ve learned from their work in the past and expect to learn in the future.

  As ISIS was on the rise, before this book was even a glimmer in anyone’s eye, I was lucky to share the counsel, collaboration, conversation, feedback, friendship, and good (if occasionally gallows) humor of Clint Watts of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Aaron Weisburd. It was a pleasure to learn from these pros, and I look forward to learning more.

  Many more have generously shared their expertise and camaraderie over the years, and to each I owe an individual debt of knowledge or support, or both. The list includes but is by no means limited to Humera Khan, Daniel Kimmage, Kirsten Fontenrose, Tamar Tesler, Christina Nemr, Thomas Hegghammer, Peter Bergen, J. C. Brisard, Dave Gomez, Don Rassler, Chris Heffelfinger, Rachel Milton, and many others, including some who for various reasons cannot be named.

  John Horgan and Mia Bloom deserve an extra-special shout-out here for their professional support, personal friendship, and the role they played in bringing Jessica and me together for this project. (Not to mention Thomas Hegghammer, who first introduced us some months earlier.)

  In the world of journalism, I am thankful for those who have had the good grace to take me seriously, especially James Gordon Meek of ABC News, Scott Shane of the New York Times, Thanassis Cambanis of the Boston Globe, and Josh Meyer of the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative.

  Patiently and creatively supporting my education on the technical and social media side of things have been, among others, Daniel Sturtevant, Bill Strathearn, Jonathan Morgan, Justin Seitz, Yasmin Green, and Brendan Ballou.

  For giving me platforms from which to write, I thank Foreign Policy, and editors Ben Pauker, Blake Hounshell, Peter Scoblic, Susan Glasser, Uri Friedman, Noah Shactman, Hillary Claggett, and many others. And given my work’s focus on social media, both in the book and out, I would be remiss not to mention those who have over the medium of Twitter consistently encouraged me, shared their knowledge, or both, including @NewNarrative, @el_grillo1, @stick631, @hipbonegamer, @ibsiqilli, @gregorydjohnsen, @blogsofwar, @morgfair, and @hlk01.

  For the writing and research of this book, many hands helped carry the load. They include Jessica’s research assistant Abigail Dusseldorf, who put in many long hours on a host of issues; my research assistant Sam Haas, who provided critical help on ISIS’s external operations and a host of other matters; and on Twitter-related issues, Jonathan Morgan, Youssef Ben Ismail, Yasmin Green, and Jana Levene. Without their labors, this wouldn’t have come together, and all helped make this book better and more complete.

  At Ecco Books, the enthusiastic support and editing of Daniel Halpern was one of the primary factors in making this project happen, with Gabriella Doob sharing editing duties and catching countless fixes. Martha Kaplan of the Martha Kaplan Agency provided tremendous assistance in bringing all the elements together and sage counsel along the way.

  Finally, I want to thank my family, most especially my wife, Janet, without whom none of this would have been possible, or even imaginable. Most of the people named herein are part of a complex web of events and capabilities. Subtract any of them, and the course of my career might have veered away from this moment. But no one is more essential than Janet. From the start of my interest in the topic of terrorism, through long years during which that interest seemed of questionable utility, through the writing of my first book and through
every step of writing this book, Janet’s emotional, logistical, and editing support have been crucial. None of my professional steps forward could or would have happened without her, but my gratitude to her for all the things she has enabled in my work is only a tiny fraction of my gratitude for all the things she has brought to my life.

  JESSICA STERN

  First, I thank Dan Halpern, whom I am lucky to call my editor, whose idea it was to write this book. I would not have dared to tackle the topic without Dan’s encouragement and counsel. I also thank Gabriella Doob, associate editor at Ecco, for her extraordinary efforts on our behalf, including lightning-fast editing and other help.